


babe I'm gonna leave you

by thesecondsmile



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Battle of Azzano (Marvel), Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), First Kiss, Guilt, Heavy Angst, M/M, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Steve Feels, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Time Stone, Time Travel, World War II, train scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-15
Updated: 2021-01-15
Packaged: 2021-03-12 22:34:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28767900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesecondsmile/pseuds/thesecondsmile
Summary: Something goes wrong with the Time Stone.  In the aftermath of Endgame, an older Steve is thrown back to the war and has to decide whether to let Bucky go.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 7
Kudos: 38





	babe I'm gonna leave you

**Author's Note:**

> See end notes for CW
> 
> Title taken from 'Babe I'm Gonna Leave You' by Led Zeppelin. The lyrics aren't the most inspiring but the melody and the mood they manage it convey is incredible and the haunting quality really matches the mood of this fic, highly recommend you listen along to it!

One moment he is handing the Time Stone back to Strange for safekeeping, the next he finds himself in a dimly lit corridor, the flickering lights illuminating a familiar wooden weight in his hands to the sound of screams. It was one of the worst times in his life, heart in his throat, hands clutched around the flimsy cardboard circle as his toobig feet pounded the pavement in search of his friend.

_Azzano._

Steve knows how this ends, with a tortured but _alive_ Bucky strapped cruelly to a table, blank eyes gazing unseeing at the ceiling as he repeats the only words he has left to say over and over again. Still, his breath quickens and he can’t help the growing clamminess of his palms as he sprints desperately to a room he thought he would never have to see again.

The scene is familiar, but time is a fickle thing and reality not as set as it would seem, and he only hopes it ends as well as it did the first time. When he finally rounds the corner that seemed like an eternity away, following the precious rhythm of Bucky’s waning voice, he almost collapses with relief at the sight that greets him.

The figure on the table is a far sight from the strong, healthy man that left him behind in their little apartment in Brooklyn, dressed sharply in his pristine new uniform, eyes too bright for the horrors that would come. 

Steve knows that it has only been a few days, but Bucky’s body already bears the scars that betray the hell he has been through. Greedy track marks line the crook of his elbow and lines criss-cross up the rest of his arm. Dark, ugly bruises pepper the canvas of his skin, the same skin Steve used to tenderly paint a rainbow of colours he couldn’t see across back when things were simpler. Grime gathers in the hollow caverns of his sunken cheeks, the pallor of sickness sucking away vibrancy from a man who had the entirety of Brooklyn wrapped around his playful fingers and the curve of his charming grin. Worst of all is the tortured quality in his gaze, clouded over with images of shadows and monsters Steve cannot even begin to imagine. 

Still, Steve sends a breathless thanks to every deity his stuttering mind can think of, visions of twisted limbs and broken bones evaporating as he takes in the shallow rising of Bucky’s chest and the rapid pulse that thrums in his throat. Having lived through years where he was not granted even that, when he had to wake up each morning to the cold side of a bed and an empty apartment, he will take anything of Bucky that he can get. The first time he was in this room was the first time he had had to confront the possibility of a life without Bucky, and now that he knows what that’s like, the relief is twofold.

With a gentleness that belies his trembling hands, he undoes the restraints chaining Bucky to his torment. “Buck? Buck, thank God. Come on, let’s get you out of here.” 

“Ste– Stevie? I thought you were smaller.” Bucky’s dazed and confused expression wrenches at his heart, but he relishes in the familiar sound of the voice that has had a place in his head since they were two little boys picking bottle caps and fights in dusty back alleys together. 

“I thought you were dead.” The words tumble out of his mouth on instinct, and he can’t forget the sheer gratefulness that rushes through him at being able to say that, his biggest fear no longer a reality.

With all the tenderness of a century’s worth of love, he gently helps his friends up and the two slowly make their way out of that nightmarish factory. As he breathes in the warmth slowly returning to Bucky’s frame and cherishes the solid press of Bucky’s body leaving against his, the world in front of him starts to swim. With each challenging step they take, his vision starts to darken and his head pounds with the beginnings of loss. The air in front of him wavers and he is yanked away from that moment of refuge.

  
  


*****

  
  


When his vision next clears, he finds himself sitting on a damp log in a dark forest. The faint scent of ashy smoke drifts past his nose and for a moment, he thinks he is back in Brooklyn, in a dinky little room with peeling walls and a lounging figure lazily bringing a cigarette to his lips. 

He snaps out of that fantasy when he turns his head to look at the figure on his left. Bucky smiles lightly in between drags, closing his eyes in a mimicry of peace. To anyone else, it might look like Bucky is relaxed, but Steve has spent years memorising every curve of that face and he can see the unease that rests heavy behind the smile. Every few seconds, when he thinks Steve isn’t looking, Bucky’s eyes snap open and scan frantically around the dark trees for an enemy that isn’t there. Steve now knows that he sees shiny round glasses and gleaming syringes in the shadows.

He remembers this moment, where he should have said something, asked Bucky if he was alright, told him to go home, done anything to combat the haunted look that colours those piercing blue eyes. Instead, he had stayed silent, selfishly taking in the few moments where everything was quiet, where no clamouring officials were hounding for strategy meetings, where no awestruck young soldiers were crowding his impressive new body looking for a fraction of the attention they hadn’t deigned to spare the scrawny little man struggling his way through basic training. 

He had been so overwhelmed by this new normal that came with Erskine’s miracle that he had forgotten that in those same few days, in a blinding white sterile room, Bucky had also had his entire world stripped from him.

He opens his mouth to say something, but in that same moment, he’s whisked away again.

  
  


*****

  
  


When he opens his eyes to see the inside of a smoky bar, he instantly knows where he is. He’s starting to understand how the Time Stone works, and he knows that he needs to make the most of whatever few precious seconds it grants him. 

Tearing himself away from the merry crowd of drunken men clinking their watered down beers with raucous calls, he manages to locate Bucky seated alone at an old, stained counter, sedately sipping his drink and gazing off into the distance. Steve slips into the seat next to him and has to push down the feeling of deja vu that rises up in him.

This is quite possibly his one chance to save his best friend from a lifetime of torture and there’s no easy way to start the conversation. He takes a deep breath and speaks. 

“Hey Buck, I know I can’t even begin to understand what you went through at Azzano, but trust me, no one will blame you if you head off right now, take a medical discharge and go back to Brooklyn. God knows you deserve it.”

Bucky gives a dry chuckle that grates at Steve’s ears and throws his drink back. 

“You tellin’ me that old Uncle Sam is gonna let their Captain go off to play house with some schmuck in Brooklyn?”

Steve hears the derision in Bucky’s tone and hates it. “No, Erskine gave his life to make me like this and everyone’s still counting on me. There’s a lot of good that I can do here Buck, much more than if I went home and continued to draw little pictures and do up ads for Mr Kelner’s grocery store. But you, you’ve done more than your fair share. You can go back a hero Buck, have your pick of any girl back home, start a family. You can have a life!” 

He can hear the pulse of desperation in his voice, the ache that starts in his formerly arthritic bones and spreads to his tissue thin lungs that used to struggle to expand. He might have been made into a super soldier here, but Bucky’s always been the perfect man. Steve belongs on the battlefield, created to take blows and run headfirst into enemy territory, but Bucky, Bucky had so much good in him that he could go home and do anything. He deserved the world, not to be _the only Howling Commando to give his life in service of his country_.

Even with that new film of fear coating his eyes, Bucky still stares resolutely at Steve, a trust forged through years of being each other’s rock and Steve swallows the lump forming in his throat. 

“Yeah, fat chance of that happening. What’s going to happen to you when I leave all the stupid with you? You heard me pal, it’s us together till the end of the line.”

He knows it’s selfish, but he also remembers how hellish the warfront was, the many times he had stumbled off to go vomit into a dirty old snowbank to try to get the sight of blank eyes in blown out heads and limp fingers lying next to smiling throats out of his mind. 

_Maybe just a little longer._

He tells himself that the fateful mission on the train won’t come for another few weeks and he still has plenty of time, but his mouth still feels oddly dry when he says his next line.

"You ready to follow Captain America into the jaws of death?"

"Hell, no. That little guy from Brooklyn who was too dumb to run away from a fight, I'm following him."

  
  


*****

  
  


He enjoys a perfect few days, where it’s just him and Bucky and the Howlies, cutting easily through German territory to the comforting sounds of Dugan’s boisterous laughter and Dernier’s rapid cheerful French. 

Then comes the mission on the train.

He’s tried several times in the past few days to convince Bucky to go back home. Each time, he’s met with a derisive snort or a roll of the eyes.

“Yeah right. Between the two of us, we’ve got maybe one functioning brain cell and you can’t afford for me to take that and go off to Brooklyn.”

“Nice try pal, but if I’m gone, who’s gonna watch your six when you decide to jump onto a grenade with a massive target strapped to your back?”

He tries, but still, he finds himself marching shoulder to shoulder on their way to the train. He’s been trying frantically to think up some way he can get Bucky to just _go home and be safe_ , and he’s sure that others have picked up on the increasing quick puffs of his breath as his heart threatens to pound out of his chest with dread. He can see the way Morita eyes him suspiciously and Gabe and Dernier not-so-subtly gesturing at him while speaking in brisk, muttered French, but ultimately it is Bucky who breaks. 

“Alright, me and the Captain are gonna go off and have a quick little chat to figure out what’s going on with him. The rest of you, take a break, smoke some cigs or something!”

With that flurry of words, he grabs Steve’s arm firmly and drags him behind a tree a distance away.

Whirling around on Steve with annoyance in his eyes, he starts impatiently. “Alright, spit it out, what’s going on Steve? You’ve been weird these past few days and you couldn’t lie to save a donkey, so just tell me what’s the problem!”

In burst of emotion, Steve can’t help but blurt out, gripping Bucky’s wrists tightly with a crazed look in his eyes. “This mission Buck, you’re going to fall and HYDRA’s gonna get you and–”

Bucky steps back like he’s been slapped. “HYDRA? What, Steve– How do you know this?”

Steve feels like tearing his hair out, but he’s in too deep and he’s said too much already. “I’m from the future. We’re fighting some Nazi goons on the train and one of them goes to shoot me, but you were watching and blocked it, but the force threw you out the train and you fell. I couldn’t grab you in time. I know what’s going to happen to you and it’s terrible, so you need to get out of here right now. _Please._ ”

Bucky takes a deep breath, looking shellshocked as he tries to digest the information. After a tense few moments, he steels his face and looks back at him seriously.

“You believe me?”

“Of course I do punk. I told you, you can’t lie worth a damn and especially not to me — I’ve always been able to see right through you, since you first tried to tell me it was Tommy Mayhard who threw the first punch.”

Steve tamps down on the warmth that spread through his chest at that and smiles up at Bucky hopefully. “So you’ll go back to Brooklyn?”

“No way in hell. So what, I get blasted out a train, but you’re still safe aren’t you? You told me that I fell protecting you, so if I’m not there, who’s gonna watch your six? There’s absolutely no chance that I’m leaving you here to face this alone.”

The fuzzy feeling growing in his chest turns to ice.

He grows even more frantic. “No Buck! Didn’t you hear me? You fall. You’re trying to reach me but I let you go and they capture you and they torture you–”

To his dismay, Bucky simply waves him off. “Yeah okay, I fall, so what? Someone’s gotta protect Captain America and if I get to be that mook, it would be an honour. I’ve spent my whole life watching your back and I’m not about to stop now. They can go ahead and try to torture me, I’ve already been through that once and it’s not about to get me to give up on my friend. Nothing could be worse than that.”

He wants to scream. His chest is pounding and he feels the familiar sense of vertigo sneak up on him. “No Bucky, you don’t understan–”

  
  


*****

  
  


The sense of horror doesn’t disappear.

He’s thrust right in the middle of the carriage with the door blown wide open, the howling winds tearing sharply at his face. He’s just in time to watch Bucky be thrown out the hole in slow motion, one hand reaching out frantically to catch a rail in time.

It is his worst nightmare come alive again. He’s seen this scene play out hundreds of times in his sleep, each one ending with the same terrible look in Bucky’s eyes as the rail snaps and he plummets thousands of feet to a fate worse than death. It’s somehow worse seeing it in person.

He launches himself forward with the energy of a crazed creature, screaming at Bucky to grab his hand. Even as he reaches desperately for Bucky, he knows he won’t be able to get to Bucky in time.

In that moment, a dark thought comes over him. He can’t stop Bucky from falling, but he might still be able to deliver one last mercy. He thinks of the cruel arm grafted to Bucky’s bones alongside a myriad of angry scars, the way Bucky still wakes up screaming in Russian from the ghosts that will never let his bloody hands go, the blank look in his eyes that he still gets even years later when someone gives him an order. The gun strapped to his side weighs heavy on him. 

With shaking hands, he unclasps it and raises it slowly. He sees the understanding in Bucky’s eyes that harden into resignation as he gives a slow nod. Tears leaking furiously from his eyes, Steve blinks them back and aims.

In the end, he lets Bucky fall and it’s just as gut-wrenching the second time. As he howls in agony, clutching his shield as if it could somehow reverse the past five minutes, he vows to himself. 

_I’m going to get him. First thing out of here, I’m going to go back and I’m going to save him. I won’t let him down this time._

  
  


*****

  
  


The next time he wakes up, he freezes.

It’s a sight he won’t forget, the last thing of this century he ever saw. The inside of the Valkyrie.

_NO NO NO NO NO._

This wasn’t supposed to happen. He wasn’t supposed to be here yet. He was supposed to lead the Howlies, all solemn-faced and sober, ready to go rescue their fallen comrade. He was supposed to find Bucky in that snowdrift, blue lips tinged with frostbite, pulse slow and sluggish, maybe even bleeding out from his mangled arm, but he was supposed to find Bucky alive and bring him back to Brooklyn. To hell with the war, to hell with everything else, he would have gone back to Brooklyn and their lousy little apartment where Bucky would work at the docks and he would draw silly little ads for Mr Kelner’s grocery store and they would bring girls out on double dates to Coney Island but sit next to each other on the Cyclone and Bucky would hold his hand while he threw up his lunch afterwards and they would go home and cuddle together on their cramped bed and they would be _happy._

Sheer horror and revulsion rise up in crashing waves over him, and he looks around desperately for anything that could help. He searches his memory back, pushing past the stabs of his own fear that colour it as he felt the ice slowly start to take him, for some hope in this terrible nightmare.

_Peggy._

He rushes frantically for the radio, hoping somehow to get the message out to Peggy, to someone, to _anyone_ , that Bucky is alive and needs help. It doesn’t work. The water must have seeped into the electrical systems and fried them. Rage pumping through his veins, he flings it with all his strength at the wall, uncaring of the dent it leaves behind.

With a guttural wail, he sinks to the floor, pounding his fists on the metal. What was the point?

Why did the stone send him back in time, if only to make him relive this ultimate torment? Where he had to face all the moments he could have done something, but failed his friend again?

What was the use of Erskine’s serum if all it produced was a failure, a monster that couldn’t save the one person that had been there with him through everything, that was willing to fight through days of torture to watch his back, that didn’t hesitate to follow him even when he knew it would lead to his miserable demise?

He thinks of the years, the _decades_ stretching out in front of him where Bucky would be tortured. Wiped, stripped of everything that made him human, turned into a machine, not a person. He had read all the files that detailed the beatings, the maintenance, the correction. The experiments, the freezing. He had been through one experiment of his own that he had consented to, and been frozen once before. He didn’t remember much, but he knows that even with a childhood of chronic pain and years after spent fighting monsters, they were the two most painful moments of his life, outside of letting Bucky fall, where all his nerves were screaming and his body was being remade from the inside. 

Bucky would experience that thousands of times over, forced into becoming an assassin through pain and violence. In the meantime, Steve would be sleeping peacefully in the ice, paraded around the world as the savior of America, the perfect soldier, oblivious to the evil that would consume Bucky for 70 years.

When the water moves over him, he doesn’t fight. Steve goes into the ice screaming Bucky’s name, and he knows that he’ll wake up with one word on his lips.

  
  


*****

  
  


Something is different this time.

Even with the knowledge of what he had left Bucky to face that tears at him with every breath, there is a certain sense of rightness that he feels.

The silence is broken by a voice. “Stevie?”

His eyes snap open. _This can’t be real._

Still, when Bucky calls, even if it isn’t real, even if this is yet another twisted game the stone is playing on him, he will answer. Voice wavering, rough from screaming, he responds. “Bucky?”

“Yeah pal, it’s me. You’re back home Stevie.” The voice is soft and comforting, the only thing he wants to hear for the rest of his life.

_Did I_ – _Did I save him?_

A small, tentative voice in him rises. He braces himself and opens his eyes.

His hopes are dashed the minute he sees the metal arm and the wizened look of his friend’s face. Taking in the other concerned faces looking in at him, he absent-mindedly notes, _Tony, Natasha, Bruce, Sam, T’Challa, Clint, Shuri._ They all mean nothing to him. Not when Bucky is standing in front of him.

Still reeling from the memories of that face disappearing into the white expanse of snow below them, he stumbles into Bucky’s arms. They instinctively come up to wrap around him and he allows himself a moment to just be surrounded by that warmth.

Then he remembers the past few days and wrenches himself back. Bucky looks shocked by his actions and everyone else is staring at him with equal amounts of confusion. 

The guilt threatens to eat him alive. Here is the man that he loves more than anything, who he has failed to save time and time again. How dare he take comfort from them knowing all the ways that he has let Bucky down?

He feels sobs rising in his throat and collapses to the ground. Around him, he hears gasps and voices start up as they rush towards him, but the only refrain that runs through his mind is _it’s all my fault._

Distantly, he feels strong arms carry him up, walking out towards a room, but he doesn’t stir. It’s all over. When the darkness comes, he goes willingly.

  
  


*****

  
  


He comes to awareness slowly. He feels softness beneath him and plush covers cocooning him. 

“Hey there Stevie, can you open those pretty blues for me?”

_Bucky._

The voice is soft and sweet, and while the last thing he wants to do is to confront the world, this is the least he can do. When bleary eyes finally open, they’re met by a kind smile under relieved blue eyes.

“You gave everyone quite the scare when the stone suddenly glowed blue and you just froze. Strange told us that it was probably fine, that the Time Stone alone wouldn’t allow you to alter reality or let anything bad happen to you, but still, I was worried about you. You weren’t gone for that long, just an hour maybe, but when you came back and just collapsed, it really freaked us out. I brought you back to our room so you could rest and you’ve slept for about 26 hours. Are you feeling better?”

That just makes Steve want to weep again. After everything, Bucky’s first concern is still him. Something must show on his face because Bucky looks worried again.

“Hey hey, it’s all fine. I don’t know what you saw, but we’ve defeated Thanos. Everyone is here and alive and well, but do you want to tell me what happened with you and the stone?”

Steve crumples. He can’t stand looking at those concerned blue eyes, caring about _him_ , and he knows that Bucky’s love is the last thing he deserves. He needs to confess his sins and let Bucky know what a monster he’s been protecting for the better part of a century, the reason why he went through the worst torture imaginable.

Through stuttering breaths, he tells Bucky everything like a man on death row. He’s done the worst thing possible so there’s nothing else that could condemn his soul anymore, but he still feels like absolute scum as he describes his failures.

When he finally finishes telling about the Valkyrie, he stares down at his clenched hands fisting the blanket. Whatever vitriol Bucky wants to spew at him, whatever hurtful malice Bucky throws at him, will be the least of what he deserves. It’s only Bucky’s right to shout at the man who brought all this down on him.

Bucky does none of that. Gently, he unclenches Steve’s hands and brings them close to his own.

“Stevie, can you look at me?”

Guilty blue eyes come up to meet sorrowful orbs.

“Steve, none of this is your fault.”

He shakes his head fervently. Bucky is still too good to understand what terrible things he has done.

“Hey, none of that. I mean it. There is nothing that you have done that was wrong, that I have ever resented you for. You are a good man, Steve Rogers, and it has been the greatest honour in my life to be able to be with you. I will never forget what happened to me, those years under HYDRA, but I don’t regret a single moment of it, if it meant that you were safe. I would go through everything a thousand times more if it means that I can have another day with you. I have always loved you, and I still do, with all of my heart. Nothing you have done or will do can ever change that. Not since the moment I met you, that small little punk with a bruise on his face and a heart bigger than all of Brooklyn.”

Steve can’t help but launch himself forward into Bucky’s waiting embrace and sobs pour out of him. There are tears and too much emotion in the air, but their lips meet in a desperate kiss as Steve tries to pour out all of his heart into Bucky. 

_Bucky. Bucky. Bucky. His world, his everything has always been Bucky._

“Let it out Stevie. It’s a new day, and we’re both here. Till the end of the line, remember, and our line isn’t up yet. Not for a long time.”

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> CW: Brief consideration of a mercy killing by a character, who doesn't end up going through with it.
> 
> This is just a quick exploration of a concept that's been bugging me for a while, starting from the scene of Steve in the Valkyrie knowing what fate awaits Bucky, and the horror that would come with him not being able to do anything about it. I am so happy that Steve and Bucky can get reunited in the future, but I always wonder; would it be worth all the years of torture? 
> 
> I hope this work stirs something in you, and please tell me about it in the comments! I would love to hear your thoughts on this difficult decision and whether as Steve, you would have shot Bucky in that moment to spare him from the years under HYDRA with the knowledge you have. Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy it! A whole more line-up of fics to come :-)


End file.
